I Loved You More (47 page)

Suddenly I'm in a battle of life and death and I really want to hurt her. When I speak again, the rage surprises me.

“He was going to spend the night,” I say. “But then you bust in and fill up the room.”

Ruth's fist slams down onto the table. The dishes jump. The Cannon Beach candle goes all the way out. Ruth gets up from the table and switches on the fluorescence of the overhead kitchen light. Just like that she's in my face.

“You mean this whole time you two were.” Ruth stops.

“Yes,” I say. “We
were
.”

“And you don't tell me this very important detail earlier in the evening,” Ruth says, “because I'm a larger than life loudmouth bitch?”

“Something like that,” I say.

The flush of red on her neck, up the side of her face. Eyes as blue as ice. Her fist comes in a round house that I grab with my fist and stop. For a long moment Ruth and I are grunts and groans, Hank Christian and Barry Hannah armwrestling.

No doubt about it, she could kick my ass. Maybe I should let her. I'm the asshole man and I deserve it. But still my fist stays around her wrist.

Everything above is bright bright and on the floor black shadows suck up and stick onto the underneath of things. Ruth's hair ain't red, it's pink cotton candy. Her face, the skin of
her arms and hands, as if the red blood inside her has turned to lemonade. A black shadow sucked up and stuck under her chin.

“You're hurting my wrist,” she says.

“Then stop trying to hit me,” I say.

Ruth steps back, I let go, Ruth holds her wrist with her other hand. Under her brows, her eyes are black round bruises.

“Ben,” she says, “Fucking Ben Grunewald. How humiliating.”

I have to cover my eyes. The kitchen is small and with the table the only place to stand is between the sink and the table right next to Ruth. I don't know what to do. Maybe try and touch her, but I don't want to touch her. I end up just standing in a bright room with my hands over my eyes.
I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry
is what's going round in my head. But Big Ben ain't sorry. He loved getting hard and he loved coming. What's there to be sorry for. And he's pissed that he even has to explain.

Stomping. It's easy to stomp in my house because it's old and there's no insulation and the fir flooring sets right on the floor joists. And Ruth is a big girl and she's stomping. Shakes the whole house. She stomps into the dining room and turns on the overhead light. Then into the living room. Ruth turns on the overhead light in there. Then the bedroom, and the bathroom. Stomping. It ain't long and all the bright overhead lights in the whole house are on.

Fucking bright overhead lights, man. Queen Lowlighta in a meltdown.

“You need to bring some light into this fucking place,” Ruth says. “Maybe you could see something.”

Before I know it, Ruth's grabbed her hoodie and she's out the kitchen door. The slam that rattles the dishes. Outside, Ruth turns on the bright porch light. I open the kitchen door, follow Ruth out the door, into the rain. Through the gate, out into the street, I stand by her Honda Civic as she starts the car. Her door is locked. I'm knocking on the window.

“Please, Ruth,” I say.

For a moment, Ruth looks up from behind her window.
The lights of the dashboard gold and amber onto her face. Terrifying, really, how beautiful she is. I think maybe she will stop. She will roll down the window and we'll. I don't know. But just then the music goes loud inside the car. “Rock Lobster.” Ruth lets up on the emergency brake. Leaves a patch of rubber just inches from my toes. Ruth's silver Honda Civic is a roar down the street, then red brake lights, a turn signal, and she's gone.

My house, every light's on in the place, and through the rain and fog, my house looks haunted.

It is haunted.

My wet socks on the wet asphalt. My clothes are soaked through. The wet feels good on my hot skin. I could lay down right there and never get up.

And that's just what I do. Lie down in the fucking street.

It ain't five minutes and Ruth's Honda Civic screeches back around the corner. Headlights straight for me. I think maybe she's going to run me down like a dog. But she doesn't. Really, I'm disappointed.

Pretty soon it's Ruth's body lying next to me on the asphalt. Close but not touching. On the shiny black pavement of SE Morrison. Rain coming down in buckets. Like we're in a shower stall, the way the rain comes down. Hard rain on our faces, pounding our chests, our legs, smashing our clothes onto our skin. Fuck it. What's a little rain when you're half-dead and you haven't slept a decent night's sleep since forever.

Fucking rain, man.

When the squall has passed and the rain is coming down light, when I finally have stopped crying, Ruth lays her head on my arm and clears her throat.

“So tell me,” Ruth says, “isn't
Gruney
what Hank Christian used to call you?”

THAT NIGHT WE
stay up, Ruth and me, sitting across from each other at the kitchen table, under the bright overhead kitchen
light. In the house, all the overhead lights on bright.
Midnight in Missoula
talking talking.

I don't know what to tell Ruth. All I can say is
I'm sorry, Ruth
. Shit, I sound like every other guy in the world trying to explain why he can't keep his dick in his pants.

Later on, on the couch in front of the fireplace, I'm sitting up and Ruth's lying down with her head in my lap. I'm staring into the fire and it comes to me.

“It's like in your favorite movie,
Living Out Loud
,” I say. “The part where Holly Hunter tells Danny DeVito that she loves him but not like he loves her.”

In no time at all, Ruth's up from the couch and she's got her coat.

“What?” I say.

“
I'm
Danny DeVito?” she says.

Ruth starts crying so hard she gets the hiccups. When Ruth slams the kitchen door this time, she slams the door so hard, a water glass falls out of the drying rack and breaks on the floor.

THEN COMES THE
night. The night. Ruth's class and my class, twenty writers in all, decide to get together on a Saturday night and have a dinner at a restaurant three blocks from my house. When I corner Ruth, she swears she didn't have a thing to do with the party. But I don't believe her. It's Ruth's favorite restaurant. And it's close to my house.

I, of course, don't want to go. My days of drinking too much white wine, baked Vienna sausage hors d'oeuvres, talking about writing, and Chicken Kiev and wild rice for dinner, are over.

But I go.

It's summer, almost, May, I think, and the evening is warm. Sunlight comes through the leaves of the maple in front of my house. Sunlight and the shadows of the leaves shake around on the faux Persian carpet on the living room floor. I've put on a clean white shirt and my khaki pants. The black belt I bought a dozen years ago on St. Mark's, I've had to punch a new hole in
to hold my pants up. Right there at the button on the top, my pants bunch together like khaki drapery folds. I slip on my black loafers. I decide to go sockless, like I always used to do. Back in the day, I'd roll my pants up and show off my tanned ankles and my beautiful feet. I step out the back door, though, and look down. My ankles are not tanned and they're skinny and old. My beautiful feet are cold because of the neuropathy. Two of my ten toenails are ugly with fungus. I go back inside, pull on a pair of dark socks, load my pockets up with enough Xanax to kill a regular customer. That's when the phone rings. It's probably Ruth. Ruth is the only person who calls me.

That voice. I'll never forget that voice.

“Hey, Gruney!”

Fuck me, I can't believe it. Hank Christian.

Something in my heart, a sudden flame, a fire in my heart I didn't even know was out.

“My God Hank,” I say. “Where are you? How are you? I've fucking missed you so much, man. Are you a doctor yet?”

“Tough times, Gruney Babe,” Hank says. “Real tough times.”

“Are you all right?”

“The big C, man,” Hank says. “Cancer.”

“What?!”

“I just got back from the doc today. They say it's in remission. So I thought I'd come see you.”

“I got AIDS, Hank,” I say.

Three thousand miles of wire between us. I can hear every wire.

“
Porca Miseria
,” Hank says. “I heard.”

There are no right words so I just say something.

“Are you all right?” I say. “I mean in your heart.”

“Yeah, Darlin',” Hank says. “Thanks for asking.”

Then: “Let's talk about all this when I get there.”

THE RESTAURANT WHERE
the writers are meeting is the same restaurant where a year later Ruth and Hank will have their wedding reception that I'll not be invited to.

Walking the three blocks that evening, I'm thick and dead. I feel so shocked, the world outside pushed even further away. Fucking cancer, man. The evening air is charged with doom. Yet at the same time, I'm so fucking high. And in the doom like never before, there's a hope. In August, the month that's too hot to be in Florida, Hank Christian will come and stay with me. Really, I'm not walking, I'm floating down the street.

Just before I walk in the door of the restaurant I pop two Xanax. Open the door. Old grease smell from the kitchen only people who've worked in restaurants as long as I did can smell. The toilets right there at the entrance. The women's door is propped open with a yellow cone. The smell of hair product and ammonia and something else. In the dining room proper, only three high windows, windows you can't open. Bad art on the walls. Lots of bad art. Two more Xanax.

Ruth's got everything prepared. Two tables of eight and a table of six in a special roped-off section of the dining room.

I'm early, of course. The bartender is a young man in a white shirt and black tie. He is so young and fresh-faced I want to cry. His collar is soiled and his black tie has a stain on it. But that's all right. The restaurant is dark and soon the sun will be down. His smile makes up for it all. I ask for a large soda water with a little ice and no lime. He pours my soda water, sticks a straw in it. Puts a wedge of lime on the rim. I tip him a dollar anyway.

Above each place setting there's a folded card with a name on it. I'm in the middle table. Ruth's name is right next to mine.
Buster Bangs's
folded name card is all the way across the room behind me. I sit down in my chair, prepare my strategy to get through the evening. Stay in my seat, don't move around. If someone wants to talk they'll have to come over to me. The person's name on the card on the other side of me I don't know. It's
a woman. Jan or Jane or Janet Something. Another Xanax, just the thought of talking to somebody I don't know.

NINE O'CLOCK, THE
evening and the dinner is in full swing. All the writers are a little tipsy, loud. So much laughter. But I'm not laughing. It's one of the things I do these days, stay sober and watch other people get drunk. Really it's like they're taking stupid pills. But there's another part of me. Slug down a shot of tequila is what he wants to do, and roll a Drum, and start getting real, getting down to the down low.

Ruth is wearing a new dress she bought at the Deseret. It's a sleeveless mint green summer shift. She's pulled her hair up with combs in the back. I've never seen her neck so long and graceful. She's wearing her new contacts, tinted blue contacts that make her eyes unreal blue. That night, her face is flushed. Ruth's never more than a one glass of wine girl. Tonight, though, she's on her second. She's touching my hand, my arm, she's touching my leg a lot.

I am miserable. I mean there I am in a room full of people who love me, respect me, all of them a little drunk, happy, showing off, flirting, full of emotion. Such a lovely way to enjoy yourself being human. But it's not for me. The being human part, enjoying it. Not yet. It will be three of four more years before I can be present enough to enjoy a moment again. Believe me, I'd tried.

And that night I tried too. Just fuck it, so what if it feels like there's not enough air in the room, so what if Janet next to me wears too much Shalimar and has asked three times now, each time in a more particular way, why I never write in the third person.
Ben sat at the table, perplexed, head reeling, wondering how he should answer the persistent Janet
. So what if the salad with blue cheese, the knife and fork in my hands are so far away from my mouth. So what if the world wobbles every time the fucking table wobbles when somebody leans an elbow on it. So what if the room keeps tilting hard to the left. So what if the
ringing in my ears sounds like a far off radio station. So what if my stomach feels that any minute it's going to come blowing out my ass.

Just fucking relax. Remember to smile. Breathe.

Just as the dinners are being served – our choice of either meatless lasagna or braised chicken breast – the door opens. Cool air hits the back of my neck. It's Buster and he's high as a kite. Must be a speed freak the way he moves. His hair is full of gold glitter and so's his beard. A red polka dot bow tie clipped onto the collar of his shiny green paisley shirt. A roar goes up from the women in Ruth's class. Everyone else turns to see what the commotion is.